Snow Job (35 page)

He had no appetite. Feeling faint, he subsided onto a padded chair, then raised up to remove an empty wine bottle from under the cushion. A disaster was enfolding. His ire at Beauchamp had blinded him to the unexpected.

If the press got hold of this … Thankfully, he hadn’t seen any reporters in the lobby. What option did he have except to follow an abbreviated script, play it out and get out?

The maid had gone by the time Stonewell emerged, hair dripping, a wedge of shaving cream on his chin. The vaguely pornographic T-shirt he pulled on read, “Starkers Cove, Free Yourself.”

“Well, you, um … What do I call you, Robert, Bob?”

“Call me grateful, Charley.” Stonewell slugged back a glass of orange juice, scooped more caviar. “Yeah, the folks back home are gonna bust with pride when this goes public.”

Thiessen cleared his throat. “Now, I should warn you that the announcement may be months away. So far, it’s just among you and me and the selection committee. You haven’t, of course, mentioned this to anyone.”

“Didn’t have time. Just Ernst.”

“Ernst?”

“The local law, Constable Pound. Don’t worry about him, he’s so dumb he’s already forgot. Now let me get this straight — you’re like one of the head legal beagles here, eh?”

Thiessen emitted a strained chuckle, assuming Stonewell was jesting. “I guess you could call me that. The big beagle. But, hey,
titles don’t impress me either, I’m a no-bullshit country boy just like you. Charley gives you no blarney, that’s my motto.”

“That’s great, man. To be honest, I was expecting some pompous prick.”

Thiessen laughed again, his voice cracking slightly. Strained chitchat followed, mostly about Garibaldi Island, Thiessen not getting a very clear picture of it, his powers of concentration dulled. This was broken off as Stonewell opened the door to a houseboy wheeling in a tray of mini-bottles to restock the fridge.

“You’re a mind reader, pal.”

The young man grinned broadly, knowingly. Word about the debauchery had spread like a virus through the hotel. Thiessen watched as Stonewell peeled a twenty from a thick wad in his pocket, slipped it to the departing waiter, then cracked open a beer. “You look like you could use a straightener too, Charley. Fuel up, eh, be my guest.”

Thiessen had a rule, no drinks before noon, but this was an extreme situation. His hands shook as he poured himself a whiskey neat, tilted it to his lips, felt a searing rush of warmth, of courage, however false.

“So, Robert, you must know Arthur Beauchamp and his famous wife. Your island’s most prominent couple, I would imagine.”

“Known them for yonks, man. In fact, I just finished retooling the old shyster’s heirloom Fargo.”

The old shyster
. Thiessen liked the sound of that. Encouraged, he said, “Bit of a ladies’ man, I hear.”

Stonewell patted his pockets, pulled out a bent cigarette, lit it with a groan of satisfaction, blew out a stream of smoke. “Man, I feel I’m regressing to normal. So you got something there for me to sign, Charley, like a non-disclosure agreement? I mean, what’s the deal here, because everything’s been pretty vague. Like am I supposed to sit down with a panel of experts and advise about
business solutions? I jotted down a few ideas here.” Pulling a sheaf of notes from his pocket.

“No hurry, Robert. This is just a … get-acquainted interview. We wanted to fill in some of the gaps … uh, your various businesses, daily routines. And friends, of course, like Arthur Beauchamp. I met him, I was really impressed, he’s a legend, bigger than life. A bon vivant with an eye for the chicks, they say, but hey, man, nothing wrong with that, more power to him. Boy, I’ll bet you must know some stories about the old shyster.”

Stonewell slugged back the rest of his Tuborg, then belched, stuffed his butt into the empty bottle, tapped another from a pack, lit it, squinted at Thiessen through the smoke. “Hey, Charley, you wanna burn one?”

“I’m trying to quit.”

Thiessen couldn’t figure out why Stonewell laughed. Then he blanched as he realized this hoodlum wasn’t talking about tobacco, was pulling some loose marijuana from his pocket. He rolled a joint so expertly he could’ve been Vladimir Horowitz playing a Chopin mazurka. The neatly packaged rollie suddenly landed on Thiessen’s lap.

He picked it up gingerly by the tip, pocketed it. “Thanks, buddy, I’ll save it for after. Normally I don’t toke up until after dinner. But, hey, man, another one of those Johnny Blacks would go down good.”

“You bet, Charley.” Refilling him, smiling at him with hooded eyes. “Here’s the deal, Charley. I got Arthur Beauchamp on my payroll as house counsel, so we got this, like, solicitor-client privilege that prevents me from revealing anything going between us.”

“Of course, sure, that’s out of bounds. I was just thinking of the … fun stuff.”

“Plus he’s a bud, man, like family, and he’s got his own private life, and I got to respect that — the word unfaithnessless ain’t in my dictionary.”

It had been a three-whiskey morning, so Thiessen was fairly muzzy as he slumped into his seat in the cabinet room. He prayed he wouldn’t be called upon to contribute to debate; he could barely rub two brain cells together. His head was swimming with images from that suite in the Château, and maybe with the second-hand fumes of the pot.

Thiessen had walked into the aftermath of a classic orgy.
It’s the fucking heat!
The stripper’s cry still echoed somewhere in Thiessen’s auditory canals. No way she recognized him. Bad enough that the hotel staff did. Thank God Stonewell’s pal and his bedmate never emerged.

Adding to his problems, a headache, and when Gracey banged her gavel it felt like a spike piercing his skull. He looked around: only four ministers here, everyone else out on the stump, but there was a slew of advisers led by E.K. Boyes and Gracey’s fey toady, Galbraith-Smythe. Buster Buchanan, two other generals, three colonels. They were setting up to do a show-and-tell.

“Operation Snow Job,” Clara said. “Named in honour of that smarmy snow job artist, Mukhamet Khan Ivanovich. We’re going to shut his yap” She pointed an imaginary gun at Thiessen, who jumped when she mimicked pressing the trigger. “Joke, Charley.” She’d been ribbing him mercilessly since the tomato juice debacle.

He play-acted dead, which, in his condition, wasn’t hard. Every-one laughed at this, almost too much. But maybe they were laughing with relief — Canada was finally coming out of its corner. He found the strength to join the huzzahs that greeted Gracey’s announcement that two days hence airborne missiles would be reducing Bhashyistan’s Information Ministry to rubble.

But he subsided again into anguish. That insufferably laidback stoner, with his pious claims to tact and nobility, his obviously insincere defence of Beauchamp. Thiessen had disguised his mission well enough — how had the rube clued in?

Charley had felt he was being tested, that’s why he’d twisted open a second whiskey — letting Stonewell know he was hip to the
scene, a party-hardy guy himself. “Got to split for the sweatshop, man,” he’d said, bolting to the elevator. He’d flushed the joint in the nearest john, and, to still his tremors, downed a third Scotch at the lobby bar.

Damn Anthony Crumwell — he’d carry the can if this charade backfired, he never had the right goods, and neither did his so-called genius in the field, Agent Ray DiPalma, the computer-losing screw-up. Thiessen would give Crumwell a one-way ticket to the mother country, cheerio, you wanker.

The military guys were clicking through a PowerPoint on the big screen at the back of the room: maps, charts, photos, a slideshow as meaningless as Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. Phrases buzzed by, CF-18s, wheezy Russian interceptors, air-to-ground missiles, a surgical strike on Mukhamet’s cyber centre.

He wondered why Clara was frowning at him, wondered if his fly was open. She gavelled for silence. “Charley, can I ask you a question? That bulge in your breast pocket wouldn’t be a cellphone?”

“Oh, crap.” He drew out a Blackberry, scrambled to his feet. “It’s not on, honest.”

“It’s still a capital offence.”

He hurried out to lock it away, resumed his seat with a stiff, sheepish grin, trying to make a joke of it, repeating Clara’s gesture of miming a gun, at his forehead. “Bang.” No one laughed.

Something else was nagging at him — something about his muddled morning was struggling to rise from the grave of suppressed memory. Determinedly, he shoved it aside, tuned in to a debate over whether Christmas Eve was appropriate for Operation Snow Job. Buster Buchanan’s regretful response: “War doesn’t pause to celebrate Christmas. Surprise tactics are central to the art of war, and we intend to strike when the enemy least expects it.”

E.K.: “Expand on how we seek to limit civilian casualties.”

“A first wave will take out their air defence — with, hopefully, minimal enemy losses — then a leaflet drop will alert those in the Information Ministry to the impending strike. The third son will
probably be the first to scram out of there, but we found some interesting photos on his website — he drives a yellow Hummer. Our eye in the sky confirms the same Hummer being waved into the ministry parking garage. We’ll be waiting for Mukhamet to bolt.”

Someone asked about the Calgary Five.

“Mad Igor may be crazy but he’s not dumb,” Clara said. “Dead hostages, no bargaining chips.”

“And what about those poor women from Saskatchewan?”

Foreign Minister Sonja Dubjek passed around copies of a letter. “Dr. Svetlikoff just received this. From his wife, Jill. It was mailed from Kazakhstan, probably smuggled out, but it confirms the women were in Bhashyistan as of December first and in good health.”

Thiessen was too sapped to follow much of this, but gathered the women were hiding out in a farm near Igorgrad. Something about bribing a Bhashyistan immigration officer and staying in a yurt. The letter ended,
We’re sticking it out until peace has been declared
, which produced big sighs of relief.

“We’ll pray for their continued safety,” Gracey said. Then, with uncharacteristic fervour: “We are not going to be slapped around any more by some two-bit psychopathic tyrant. If any Canadians get touched, we’ll bomb the crap out of Igorgrad.” Cheers, people rising, applauding.

Thiessen was impressed by this new version of Clara Gracey, the Amazon warrior. But as discussion continued, he was assailed by mental flashes of Stonewell and the stripper and the hookah pipe. If it got out on the street, how would he ever explain it to his mother?

Suddenly he turned white, a spine-stiffening, anus-clenching surge powering him to his feet. He made a beeline to the door. “Sorry, not feeling too good. Forgot something.
Son of a bitch!
”

The tape recorder …

I
t was a hazy, grey Thursday morning as Arthur and DiPalma boarded the ferry to cross the mile of choppy blue water from the Greek holiday island of Corfu to the hardscrabble republic of Albania. DiPalma went below, away from the smokers, but Arthur stayed above with his phrasebook, packing burley into his pipe bowl, and was soon watching Corfu’s tony villas fade into the mist.

After a three-day Greek layover, the adventure had begun, with Arthur feeling amazed at himself, at his spunk in undertaking so perilous an errand. But it had to be done — not just out of professional duty but for pride.
A Thirst for Justice
deserved a nobler ending than a nosedive into obscurity behind the ever-extending shadow of the hero’s rookie M.P. wife.

Ray DiPalma was the catalyst for this, cockily sure he could worm his way into the confidence of Abzal Erzhan’s keepers. Trust me, he kept insisting, eager for intrigue, eager to prove his global spying expertise. But for the moment, the poor fellow was doing battle below, conquering his pain, at the very nadir of nicotine withdrawal, though still on the patch.

The mainland loomed, the customs dock, a welter of tumbledown structures by the shoreline. Arthur tamped out his pipe as DiPalma, breathing heavily, burst outside and advanced toward the railing with cold determination.

Aghast, Arthur feared he was about to drown his misery by jumping, but it was the nicotine patch, ripped from his arm, that went overboard. DiPalma grimly pulled a pack of Greek cigarettes from a duty-free bag, refusing to meet Arthur’s censorious eye. His first effort at ignition failed, either because of the breeze or his shaking hands. He squatted in a corner like a whipped dog and finally got a cigarette going, pulling on it ravenously.